David Weiss on the fine — and finer — things in life

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This here, my friends, is an unassailable good thing: the copious array of wall mounts from Sanus Systems, the go-to company when it comes to accessorizing all gadgets multimedia. First things first: when I decided to go new millennium and get the old 42″ LCD off of the credenza and up on the wall where it belongs, I was thunderstruck with fear! How to find the stud in the wall that would support the Sanus hardware — would I be able to wield the drill without bringing the house down!?

No sweat. Not only were the instructions straightforward, the actual labor was painless and the screen is now a proper distance from my pillows, and can be easily moved hither and yon to achieve the optimal viewing angle. The model I got features Sanus’s Virtual Axis 3D technology, a special, cup-shaped faceplate that enables you to move the screen in any direction with a literal touch of a finger. Also, their FollowThru feature neatly hides those cumbersome cables from view, so your home doesn’t look like an electronics lab.

And the best news is that you can upgrade your home setup without facing bankruptcy proceedings! Their prices are quite reasonable and worth shopping around for. Check out their website for other cool products — speaker stands and AV racks and all manner of accessories to ensure that your audio-video rig looks as good as it performs. Their new Foundations Basic Series is heap handsome design: ergonomic, contemporary and built to last. American technology at its red-white-and-blue best!

If you are at all like me, even armed with many years experience stringing together recording studios and stereo systems and the like, the prospect of setting up and calibrating a home theater rig has always caught me up short. Too many speakers, not enough wall-space, too many wires, etc. It’s enough to drive one back to the era of rabbit ears and one five-inch speaker. Alas, the world moves too fast!

Enter the user-conscious genius-minds at Polk Audio and their SurroundBar SDA Instant Home Theater, a five-minute, no heavy lifting solution to the tinny audio that came with your cash-intensive flatscreen investment. Directions: Unbox, connect audio cable from TV to SurroundBar, plug in power to SB and wireless Subwoofer — turn the mutha on! Pour high fructose drink over ice and consume sodium-laden cholesterol nibbles and the tableau is complete!

On the egghead side, the secret to the great sound is Polk’s patented SDA (Stereo Dimensional Array) technology, a way to enjoy crisp dialogue from a solid center channel, while still managing to tickle your eardrums with a deep bass, 3-D sound envelope that heightens realism whether gaming or watching some effects-heavy action flick. All that without having a nerd squad functionary tramp through house and home at fifty smackers an hour. Warm, clear and immediate Polk sound minus the fuss and muss — sounds like an easy way out of the techno-muddle such luxuries usually entail.

I have been bashing tennis balls since I was a wee lad, with whatever wood or aluminum bit of stringed flotsam was handy. Imagine my Luddite glee when I officially joined the New Athletic Millennium and tried one of the Prince EXO3racquets. It was nothing short of a revelation. These babies are beautifully balanced, effortlessly powerful and afford one enough control to spin a ball from here to Beijing and back.

The resurgence of the Prince line is one of the great brand-name rebound stories in recent memory. Famous for the first oversized aluminum racquet to crack the market, designed by Howard Head in 1976, the company went on to create many high-tech variants — out of magnesium and boron and graphite. The tennis craze itself has enjoyed a spike recently, and Prince’s backroom technology eggheads are going full steam ahead to serve their demanding customers’ need for new gear — same as in the golf world.

Much of the company’s move to number two worldwide behind Wilson is due to the excitement generated by their 03 technology — rudimentarily, the pin-sized string holes on the side of the head have been enlarged into giant O-ports. This lends itself to more power and stability and much larger sweet spots. As pudding-proof, Russian pro Nikolai Davydenko went from number 20 in the world to number 7 less than a month after switching to an 03 racquet! Maria Sharapova is on board and won two of her three Grand Slams with O3 in hand, as well as Jelena Jankovic, who reached #1 in the world with Prince O3, as well as world #10 Gael Monfils, the most recent convert. Can’t argue with success….

In this era of bleak prognostications from Wall Street, it’s great to see an American company like Prince Tennis thriving — a testimony to technological innovation and marketing savvy, both. P.S., while you’re getting fitted for a racquet, try on a pair of the OV-1 tennis shoes, utilizing the same hole-y technology. They too are built for speed and comfort, and even look a little intimidating, never a bad thing when trying to humiliate an opponent. All hail the Prince!!

Who is David Weiss?

A Detroit native, David Weiss fled Motown for Los Angeles in 1978 and began to write for Daily Variety and the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, primarily as a music critic with a focus on jazz.

His own music career started soon thereafter, with the surrealistic funk band Was (Not Was), then various gigs as a composer and producer, working with Bob Dylan and Rickie Lee Jones among others.

In a parallel universe, Weiss has been filing golf and travel stories for T&L Golf, Golfweek and The New York Times and is a regular contributor to NPR's "All Things Considered" program, doing stories on music and all things cultural.